It is a sad day here at SFist as we mourn the loss of one of our own — and it is the first time a full-time staffer has passed for a site that has been in existence 22 years. Joe Kukura, who began contributing to the site in its earliest days and became its associate editor in the last decade, has died at age 55. The cause was complications from gastric cancer.

Joe had continued working at SFist these last several months while undergoing treatment, and he praised the care he was receiving at UCSF Medical Center. His prognosis became dire only in the last several days as he was diagnosed with pneumonia, and he passed away early Friday at UCSF Parnassus with family members at his side.

Joe was born in Russell, Ohio on December 7, 1970. He attended West Geauga High School in Chesterland, Ohio, and attended Ohio University, where he studied to be a special education teacher, and received a bachelor's degree in 1995.

Todd Golling, a friend of Joe's since 7th grade, says, "I’ll always remember him for his Hawaiian shirts, his love for Weird Al Yankovic, and his accordion playing." Golling adds, "We even started a band together called DPZA (Dead Petting Zoo Animals)."

According to Joe's brother, Jack Kukura, "Joe was always a performer," joining a punk band in high school and playing both accordion and tuba. "In college, many people only knew Joe as Elvis," he says, a sort of alt persona that was clearly a precursor to Joe's longstanding love of costumes.

Soon he was hitchhiking from Athens, Ohio to San Francisco and back again, to decide if he wanted to live here, and quickly decided he did. "When he made his official move to San Francisco, Joe took Amtrak," his brother said, adding, "Joe always chose the more adventurous route."

Joe arrived in San Francisco in June 1996 and never left, immersing himself in the world of Burning Man and San Francisco's music scene. His appreciation for the city grew from there, as Joe fashioned himself into a bon vivant who seemed to know everyone, from late night bar denizens of North Beach to members of the city’s running clubs.

"Joe was the kind of person you would be relieved to see at a party or community event — you knew you'd be safe with him, that you didn't have to put on airs, that you could anchor yourself to him to stave off social awkwardness or feeling alone," says friend Kat Robichaud.

Joe was a pioneer in the "Wild West" days of the early blogosphere, and began contributing to SFist not long after it launched in 2004 — as San Francisco's answer to New York's burgeoning Gothamist, with a largely unpaid staff. Joe's personal Blogspot blog, Exercising While Intoxicated, was inspired by his love for Bay to Breakers, and a map he created of all the liquor stores one could find along the race route was soon reprinted on SFist in 2008, creating a modest local sensation — and leading to an annual tradition of updating this map that he continued through last year.

"He didn't just love San Francisco, as many do. He understood it with a singular, unaffected point of view," says former SFist Editor Brock Keeling. Keeling remembers seeing Joe at music shows in the late 1990s, and meeting him through a friend of a friend at Joe's railroad apartment on Florida Street.

"Much can be said of his wit and solid writing chops, but what stood out most about 'Joe K' (as he was often called), was that he lacked the standoffishness or prickly ego that many writers, myself included, can't shake," Keeling adds. "Also, during a brief time when we overlapped as roommates, my cat ate his gecko. He always reminded me of that with a smile, even twenty years later. I hope the three of them are together now, in peace, laughing about it."

Over time, Joe would become something of SFist's political correspondent, delighting in the petty dramas and minor scandals that popped up in the long soap opera of the SF Board of Supervisors. And he took a special interest in digging through financial disclosures around local elections, calling campaign finance research one of his "kinks."

From three-legged dog picnics to the Hunky Jesus contest, Joe delighted in covering the kooky, often unhinged culture of our city as well.

"Joe was so happily, unselfconsciously intent on squeezing every drop of fun from his day that I was always surprised by how prolifically and smoothly he wrote," says founding SFist Editor Eve Batey. "His signature move, in life and work, was always a wide grin and a swing from the rafters."

Batey adds, "Even after decades in SF, his enthusiasm for the city never dimmed — but that doesn’t mean he was an unquestioning booster. No one was above a nudge or rib from Joe (in person and on paper), but it never felt small or petty. He wasn’t mean, but he called it as he saw it, with a core of integrity and a little bit of a smile."

"None of that changed when he fell ill late last year," Batey says. "He grew thinner and got tired a little earlier, but his gusto and love of life never wavered. San Francisco is a little less magical without him in it."

Joe did marketing content work for NerdWallet and Pulsepoint, and was also a regular contributor to SF Weekly, Thrillist, and Broke-Ass Stuart, where his bio page states, "Joe Kukura is a two-bit marketing writer who excels at homoerotic double-entendre. He is training to run a full marathon completely drunk and high, and his work has appeared in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on days when their editors made particularly curious decisions."

Broke-Ass Stuart founder Stuart Schuffman writes in his own obit for "dear friend, colleague, and fellow mischief maker" Joe, "Joe was a maniac in the absolutely best way possible, and we had so many shenanigans together... He always showed up in an insane outfit for any event, from birthdays to Folsom Street Fair, whether it be in little tutu and a tiara, or a ripped wedding gown."

And, Schuffman adds, "He was naughty, randy, hilarious, loquacious, extremely smart, and down for anything."

Other old friends, including those from his high school and college days, have written in to SFist with their own memories. Longtime friend Elizabeth Steiner, who first met Joe in his "Elvis" days in Athens, Ohio, says, "He was caring and thoughtful and kookie as hell," and "He loved San Francisco like it was a living breathing being and embraced every opportunity to explore its culture."

Multiple friends noted that Joe was an avid sports fan, with a particular love for Cleveland's less than stellar teams, the Cleveland Guardians (formerly Indians) and the Cleveland Browns — and he also dutifully recapped every 49ers game for SFist this last season.

Friend Doug Brown writes of watching Cleveland football every weekend with Joe at Kilowatt, going back to 2007. "The owner, Peter, would always reserve our spot on the stage, which we referred to as the kennel club, aka dog pawnd," Brown writes. "We were a loyal group until the ill-fated day that the Browns acquired a rapist, sexual predator as their franchise QB."

Brown added that Joe had his 55th birthday party at Teeth bar in the Mission in early December, where "lots of his friends" showed up to watch Ohio State football with him, "and he made chocolate peanut butter buckeyes, an Ohio ritual."

"It's hard to believe that would be the last time we saw him, but it was a joyful time, and Joe was definitely in his element," Brown says.

In the strange way of web content, Joe's legacy will live on in the many bits and pieces, silly puns, and daily news items he covered here and elsewhere.

We have also collected a series of memories and stories about Joe sent in by friends and loved ones.

SF-based disability justice advocate and 2024 MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner Alice Wong died Friday at 51. Wong founded the Disability Visibility Project, served on the Obama-era National Council on Disability, and wrote the best-selling memoir, Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life.

As the Chronicle reports, Alice Wong, a prolific writer, advocate, and beacon of light in the social justice world, died Friday of an infection at UCSF hospital. Wong was born with muscular dystrophy and used a powered wheelchair, as well as devices to help her breath, eat, and communicate.

When Wong was born, doctors said she likely wouldn’t live beyond the age of 18, which she said limited her early worldview in ways that ultimately pushed her toward disability justice work. She speaks about this in the below Bloomberg interview (hat tip, 48 Hills).

“Doctors told my parents I wouldn’t live past 18, so I grew up never imagining what grownup old ass Alice would look like, and this is why visibility, being able to tell our stories and controlling our own narratives, is why I do what I do,” Wong said during a 2024 summit, per the Chronicle.

As NPR reports, Wong grew up in the Midwest with immigrant parents from Hong Kong and attended public schools where she was typically the only disabled or Asian American student — or both, which forced her to learn to advocate for herself very early in life.

She moved to San Francisco in 1997 to attend school at the University of California San Francisco where she received her master’s degree in medical sociology, per the Chronicle. She later worked as a staff research associate at UCSF for ten years — while also advocating for disability justice.

Per the Chronicle, when Wong first attended UCSF, the school had to build a living space for her in a professor’s garage, as there was no accessible housing at the university at the time. Wong wrote in her 2022 memoir, Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, she struggled to attend classes due to the school’s lack of accessibility. She was forced to take a break before eventually graduating in 2004. The Chronicle notes that Wong later advised the school on improving its accessibility.

In 2014, Wong created the Disability Visibility Project, a storytelling platform and community amplifying disabled people and disability culture, in partnership with the StoryCorps series.

Per NPR, Wong was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the National Council on Disability from 2013 to 2015. She made history in 2015 when she was the first person to visit the White House via a robot “surrogate.” She attended President Obama’s reception celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act using the telepresence robot, BeamPro, which enables the user to control its movements with their computer while projecting their face onto a video monitor, per Popular Science.

Additionally, Wong was a regular columnist for Teen Vogue, published her 2022 memoir to critical acclaim, and edited a series of anthologies showcasing disabled voices. In 2024, Wong served as a MacArthur “Genius” Award fellow, per SFist, where she utilized her expertise to raise the political and cultural visibility of disabled people and expand how disability is understood.

Most recently, Wong co-partnered with NYC-based artist Finnegan Shannon on a public art project called Disabled Rage, according to Wong’s website.

Those wishing to help further the advancement of Wong’s legacy are invited to donate to her GoFundMe.

“As we mourn the incomprehensible loss of Alice, we share the words she gifted us with from her memoir, Year of the Tiger. ‘The real gift any person can give is a web of connective tissue. If we love fiercely, our ancestors live among and speak to us through these incandescent filaments glowing from the warmth of memories,’” Wong’s family wrote on social media, per NPR.

“I have so many dreams that I wanted to fulfill and plans to create new stories for you. There are a few in progress that might come to fruition in a few years if things work out,” Wong wrote in a social media post, published after her death. “I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist, and more.”

“As a kid riddled with insecurity and internalized ableism, I could not see a path forward. It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin,” she continued. “We need more stories about us and our culture. You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment. Our wisdom is incisive and unflinching.”

“Alice Wong was a hysterical friend, writer, activist and disability justice luminary whose influence was outsized,” wrote Wong’s friend and fellow activist Sandy Ho, per NPR. “Her media empire, the Disability Visibility Project, left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape of our country. The legacy of her work will carry on.”

Image: Alice Wong/Facebook

Previously: SF Disability Justice Activist Alice Wong Wins MacArthur 'Genius' Grant, as Does Cabaret Star Justin Vivian Bond

Writing for the Washington Post, writer Jeff Weiss has just done a moving and thorough job of tracking down five people in their 80s and 90s, all members of the Beat Generation who have lived to see 2017, several of whom are still living out their days in quiet corners of San Francisco — and in the case of one, in the same apartment for the last 56 years.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who is now 98, Michael McClure (84), Gary Snyder (87), and Diane di Prima (82) are names fairly familiar to English majors and lovers of American literature, and Snyder and McClure have the distinction of being part of the same reading on October 7, 1955 at Gallery Six in the Marina (now the location of Tacko, the Nantucket-themed taco and lobster roll place) where Allen Ginsberg read "Howl" for the first time. Weiss also tracks down 93-year-old "Beat-adjacent novelist" Herbert Gold, who doesn't count himself among this group but whose literary history in San Francisco is nonetheless intertwined with them — and he finds him holed up in the same "rent-controlled garrison atop Russian Hill" that he's been in since 1961.

Ferlinghetti once said, “The Beat Generation was just Allen Ginsberg’s friends," and though it's now been 20 years since Ginsberg passed on — within weeks of his good friend William Burroughs, who was also part of this gang — some of this cohort is still kicking and making art.

Weiss finds DiPrima in an apartment in the Mission living with partner Sheppard Powell, and she says they consider Burroughs like their "invisible roommate" these days because the pair have lately been engaging in seance-like readings, aloud, of every word of Burroughs's published work.

McClure is living in the East Oakland hills, where he plays Weiss the record he made in 2013 with Doors keyboards Ray Mazarek, shortly before Manzarek's death, called "The Piano Poems: Live From San Francisco."

Talking about long ago drinking buddy Jim Morrison, McClure says, "I hated him at first. I thought, ‘Who is this guy with leather pants and long hair?’ But we eventually started talking about poetry and drinking. I don’t think there was a better poet in America at Jim’s age.”

The piece is well worth a read — especially the tale of tracking down Snyder in the depths of the Sierra foothills.

Some other great quotes from the piece:

"I know that young people are striving for change, but it seems like they don’t know how to rebel or what to rebel against. The ones I know don’t have the fire in them that makes them dislike things. Everyone is amenable." - McClure

“My subconscious would tell my mind to catch where the poem had fallen down. You’re just receiving the poem, and there are inevitably going to be places where your attention breaks or you reach for a word and can hear the rhythm of it but it’s not there. Sometimes I’d write in a substitute, and fix it later." - DiPrima

“The great thing about writing is that you master your experience and are able to control it in some way." -Gold

"The main shift [as you age], and it comes about gradually, is realizing that you really will die. It’s not a joke. You really have to die. Even though you think you know it already, you don’t know it until you feel it around the corner.” - Snyder

While San Francisco fights for queer spaces in the forms of bars and neighborhoods, some see a heightened need for a different kind of queer space: LGBT Writing. When Bloom folded, California was left without a queer literary journals, so Miah Jeffra and Chad Koch, former editors at SF State's periodical Fourteen Hills, decided to solicit writers for the launch of a new journal. Their offering, Foglifter, debuts on Monday in the Castro with a reading from some of those contributors.

The publication takes its name and inspiration from,"One of the great centers of queer liberation and queer politics," as Jeffra gestures to San Francisco and its famous fog. But it also seeks, more metaphorically, "to lift the fog off of dominant narratives... to disarm, to complicate."

"There's queer interest, queer lifestyle, erotica, but there aren't, as much, queer literary organizations," Jeffra, who teaches at Santa Clara University and The San Francisco Art Institute, tells SFist. "Even within the LGBT community there are so many hegemonic narratives, and we're trying to use the queer space to make those narratives more complex and nuanced and liberating."

Reading on Monday from their work will be Nona Caspers, MK Chavez, Juliana Delgado Lopera, Shideh Etaat, Kevin Killian, Roberto Santiago, and Arisa White. Beyond the tales of coming out that mainstream audiences will be accustomed to, Jeffra classifies theirs as "more transgressive work," interested in a intersectional LGBT perspectives.

If all goes well, Jeffra hopes to expand Foglifter's mandate. The publication will come out twice yearly, and eventually he envisions it as its own press, printing full manuscripts from queer writers.

You can read more about the inaugural event here.

Foglifter Launch Reading — Monday, July 18, Strut, 470 Castro Street, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., free, $15 donation buys you a copy of the first issue

Bad news in March that Books Inc.'s location in the Castro would close was tempered by good news later that month that the Castro would not be bookstore-less thanks to an expansion of Valencia's Dog Eared Books to 489 Castro Street. The book gods giveth etc. etc.

Well, now that latter shop is open (and gearing up for an inaugural bash with Armistead Maupin, Rebecca Solnit, and more on June 20), but Books Inc. has announced its official closing date: June 15. Hoodline had word that the announced closure was imminent, and from the store's Facebook page we learn that everything is on sale until then — 30 percent off — during regular store hours of 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Books Inc. CEO Michael Tucker tells Hoodline that "leaving is tough.” Though 11 Books Inc. locations remain, the Castro spot was reportedly in the red. Still, Tucker is hopeful for the incoming Dog Eared Books. “I tell you, I was extremely pleased to find out that they were able to take a location in the Castro just two days after we had announced we were closing," he says. "The neighborhood really deserves a store. They have my best wishes.”

Previously: Another SF Bookstore Bites The Dust: Books Inc. In The Castro

We live in a relentlessly beautiful place that has inspired many over the years. This has always been a city brimming with artists, writers, and musicians — and SF's bohemian streak will hopefully not end with the 20th Century as it becomes more and more insanely expensive to stay here. But among the books that have been written about San Francisco, these fourteen stand out as our favorites, depicting different eras in a city that has been, by turns, wild, drunken, bawdy, tragic, too smart for its own good, and occasionally booming. Here are SFist's selections for the best SF-centric fiction to fill your spring and summer reading lists.

Valencia by Michelle Tea
Local queer author Michelle Tea's breakout novel, which like much of her work draws plenty on autobiographical experience, is a rollicking, kind of dirty, and very funny time capsule of the world of hip and under-employed lesbians in the Mission District of the 1990s. Tea was honing her own baldly honest, profane, Kerouacian prose style in this early book, and the free flow of her earnest, often boozed-up energy is infectious from paragraph to paragraph. The story focuses on the first-person narrator, named Michelle, looking back on her mid-twenties from not that far in the future with a sense of humor and a fondness for all things intoxicating. "She wouldn't have sex with me in public bathrooms," writes Tea. "Little things like this haunted me. I was only twenty-five." It's sweetly nostalgic now to think of a time when people could write in cafes, turn a few tricks, and cough up a couple hundred in rent each month and still be able to thrive in the Mission, and Tea's descriptions of 15th Street will not be familiar to anyone who has been here less than ten years. — Jay Barmann

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
This contemporary novel from a former Twitter employee does a marvelous job of weaving together the old world of print media with the digital age, beginning in the bowels of a mysterious, dark, seemingly infinite bookstore that has its own secret society attached. With the help of his brilliant Google-employed girlfriend, the protagonist Clay employs the wonders of the internet to crack a centuries-old puzzle. In the process, Sloan paints a picture of modern San Francisco during the Great Recession in which ex-Googlers start bagel companies and there's a speed-dating service for nerds called Singularity Singles. "Yeah. I met a guy who programmed bots for a hedge fund," says girlfriend Kat. "We dated for a while. He was really into rock climbing. He had nice shoulders. But a cruel heart." — Jay Barmann

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Tales Of The City by Armistead Maupin
Beckoning many an ingenue to Baghdad by the Bay, the first of nine novels by Armistead Maupin introduced enduring characters like the naive Mary Ann Singleton, her eccentric, pot-growing landlord Anna Madrigal, and a cast of queer locals like Michael "Mouse" Tolliver. Published in 1978 and first serialized in the pages of the Chronicle, Tales of the City occupies a special place in local literature and lore, reflecting the "alternative" mores of the '70s Bay Area like hippy bisexuality and Safeway cruising. Installments of the series incorporate current events and fictionalizations of real-life figures from Jim Jones to Elizabeth Taylor to a thinly veiled Rock Hudson. And, though the rent at 28 Barbary Lane has probably skyrocketed since those days, Tales of the City continues to offer an inclusive fictional home for San Franciscans. — Caleb Pershan

McTeague covers throughout the years

The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac
Everyone knows about the parts of On the Road that take place in SF, and Desolation Angels and Big Sur each tell sad, lonely tales that touch down in Berkeley and Big Sur respectively. But the book of Kerouac's that truly feels like a novel — a tightly written, lyrical, and brief one at that — and is his loveliest love letter to San Francisco, is The Subterraneans. It's personally my favorite of all Beat Generation novels, and the one I tell everyone to read if they try to dismiss Kerouac's talent on the basis of one book (usually On the Road). Critics sometimes bristle at Kerouac's tone around race in this one — it depicts his real-life affair with Alene Lee, who was African American, cast here as Mardou Fox. But this is a book that tries to capture North Beach of the 1950s and its liberal intellectuals of all races, as well as his own fickle heart. There's talk of "egg foo young at Jackson and Kearny" and of "the great glitter up and down Market like wash gold dusting and the throb of neons at O'Farrell and Mason bars with cocktail glass cherrysticks winking invitation to the open hungering hearts of Saturday." If you can get past the race stuff, it is a truly beautiful read. — Jay Barmann

You Can Say You Knew Me When by K.M. Soehnlein
Like Valencia, this is a book about SF in the 1990's, only this time from a gay angle, and with the added dimension of a character we meet through letters from the Beat era of the 1950's. Soehnlein paints a very real and humble portrait of pot-smoking protagonist Jamie, his beach trysts and HIV panics, his relationship with his boyfriend Woody, and his very San Francisco friends. It's a book of frank sexuality and also thoughtful reflection, and it does well tying together two legendary eras of the city in a series of confidently drawn scenes and a flurry of excellent prose. — Jay Barmann

The Barbary Dogs by Cynthia Robinson
Don't mind the cover. This contemporary mystery novel, originally titled The Barbary Galahad, is the second in a series that began with the more Berkeley-centric The Dog Park Club, centered on opera singer-turned-amateur sleuth Max Bravo. Robinson's prose is too witty and rich to belong solely in the mystery genre, and her love for and deep knowledge of San Francisco and its history is evident on every page. The Barbary Dogs centers on the Golden Gate Bridge suicide of Max's friend Frank, a failed writer whose found journal takes Max on a tour of the ghosts and bohemians of SF's past. But the humor littered through every chapter, some of it highly place-specific, will delight all locals. "I sat down on the sidewalk halfway up Diamond," Robinson writes. "To scale that particular street one needed the legs of a speed skater and the mindset of a drayage beast. I had neither of course, just a general restlessness and lack of direction." — Jay Barmann

Cover for The Joy Luck Club: Putnam

Gun, With Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem
Tell me if this sounds familiar: a tough-guy gumshoe is hot on a corruption case in a city where nothing is as it seems. Though the tropes are pure noir, Jonathan Lethem's first novel is equal parts sci-fi in a double-genre fiction experiment with its own hilarious rules. Located in a future Bay Area, "evolved" animals like kangaroos are gangsters while intelligent babies are speakeasy-frequenting cynics. The drugs snorted by most characters are named for their purposes, like "Acceptol" and "Forgettol." And lending the book its title, handguns play menacing violin music when drawn in a nod to the gangster movie soundtrack cliché. The playful streak in Gun, With Occasional Music earned it a 1994 Nebula Award nomination and continues to make it a clever, cunning caper.— Caleb Pershan

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Honorable Mentions
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
It's not a novel, exactly. Eggers maintains it's a memoir, though, like Valencia, it's pretty much a novel as well as an ode to SF in the '90's as told via the magazine world. And Eggers has some very pretty descriptions of the city, and of the frustrations of riding Muni buses. — Jay Barmann

The Royal Family by William T. Vollman
A tragedy-tourist's dream foray across the addicts and sex workers that populate the Tenderloin, this book is frequently cited on SF-set great novels list. However, the misanthropic glee Vollman expresses throughout this book makes it, however dazzlingly written, hard for us to recommend as a "best." Approach with caution. — Eve Batey

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
In this 1966 novella — frequently held up in answer to the question "what is postmodern?" — protagonist Oedipa Maas spends a bit of time in San francisco and Berkeley on her hunt to unearth a potentially major mail conspiracy. In the city she meets a group dedicated to the pursuit of falling in love as a drug experience, and in Berkeley she encounters a sort of mad engineer. Everywhere she goes in the Bay Area, Oedipa can't help but notice a secret acronym: Waste, or "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire," so be on the lookout, everyone. — Caleb Pershan

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
This recent Pulitzer Prize winner is only partly set in SF, and largely in New York, but it still deserves a mention for depicting the punk scene in SF in 1979 where main character Bennie gets his start in his first band. — Jay Barmann

(By Margaret Seelie)

Litquake may have started this past weekend, but it's not too late to dive into this annual literary festival that's been growing in San Francisco since 2002. Tonight's event, "Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Writer: Stories about Doubt, Debt, Drugs, and Determination" promises to be a doozy with real-life stories from authors who have been there.

The lineup includes:

Jamie Ford (New York Times best selling author)

Jerry Stahl (author of I, Fatty, Bad Sex On Speed, and more)

Carrie Galbraith (co-author of Tales of the Cacaphony Society)

Sandra Tsing Loh (author of Mother on Fire, and more)

Keith and Kent Zimmerman (authors of Earth, Wind, and Fire due from Viking Press in 2014)

John Vanderslice (musician and lover of cats)

Part of Porchlight Storytelling Series, tonight's show will be hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick. Tickets are still available, so go online for $20 pre-sale tickets or pay $25 at the door.

Show starts tonight at 8 PM.

Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street

In late breaking Berkeley dining news, Joyce Carol Oates (author of some of the greatest American works of our time) read Berkeley restaurant Venus to filth last night, Tweeting: "Second & last near-inedible vegan meal in Berkeley, this one at Venus on Shattuck. Didn't expect not to be charged but--maybe an apology?"

Grrrl.

Was it the 1979-sounding Vegan Stirfry (featuring coconut curry, trumpet mushrooms, fennel, roasted winter squash, broccoli robe, jasmine rice)? One can only wonder. The Shattuck Avenue restaurant, we should point out, isn't vegan-only and, in addition to glowing reviews, maintains four stars on Yelp.

The noted scribe later found solace by referencing Henry James' preface to What Maisie Knew. Classic Oates!